#Ritzy restaurant serving meals in sidewalk plastic bubbles sparks outrage

A sushi restaurant in a poverty-stricken neighborhood of San Francisco has come under fire for serving elite customers inside giant “bubbles” — amid a homeless crisis precipitated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Critics claim that Michelin-starred restaurant Hashiri, whose “garden igloos” were erected on the Mid-Market sidewalk to accommodate pandemic safety restrictions, is making a spectacle of the disproportionate wealth gap in one of the country’s wealthiest regions. They’re also accusing the restaurant’s management of insensitive and racist rhetoric. Recently, general manager Kenichiro Matsuura referred to the local “crowd” as “not too favorable” in an interview with ABC7.

“So … the *homeless* can watch as the wealthy five-star diners can safely eat … cake?” wrote one critic on Twitter.

“Great idea! without these important domes what would the homeless people be able to press their noses up against,” added another.

But restaurant owners say they’re struggling, too, and the city’s inability to support their homeless population is bad for small businesses.

“There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” Matsuura also told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

Their menu features a five-course kaiseki and omakase edomae-style sushi dinner at $200 per person. Their take-out menu also includes a $500 “Ultimate Trifecta” bento box and a $160 D.I.Y. wagyu sukiyaki kit.

Neighboring businesses, along with residents and shelter advocates, are pointing their fingers at local lawmakers, who they allege are using Hashiri as a scapegoat for their ineffective leadership in the face of a homelessness crisis, which has descended upon the Mid-Market neighborhood. They’re suing the city for negligence.

“The city has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues,” the lawsuit alleges.

At the same time, their Public Health Department has made multiple attempts to shut down Hashiri’s domes, claiming they don’t comply with the ventilation needed to keep customers safe from coronavirus aerosols.

The Chronicle’s restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, wrote in a recent column, “I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most.”

She continued, “An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle … for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now.”

While the igloos were temporarily put out of commission by the health inspectors, the restaurant was able to resurrect the concept as of last week, with a few structural modifications.

“Keep going! Don’t be deterred by the liberal haters!” said one follower on Facebook. “You are not to blame for the druggies and drifters accumulating in Nancy Pelosi’s district.”